A virtual machine in a virtual computing infrastructure can run on a host device that comprises physical hardware and virtualization software. One or more applications that can run within the virtual machine can generate data that may be stored on one or more virtual disks. The process of backing up a virtual machine, or one or more data sets of a virtual machine, can burden the performance of the virtual machine. To reduce the performance burden of backing up a virtual machine or data set, a backup of a virtual machine or data set can be off-loaded to a backup proxy node. A backup proxy node can be a virtual proxy node on a proxy server or a physical proxy node, such as a backup proxy server. A backup proxy node can also be a virtual proxy node on a host computer that hosts virtual machines that may be backed up using the virtual proxy node. A virtual proxy node is a virtual machine configured to facilitate backup functionality in a virtual environment.
In the prior art, one or more virtual machines or data sets are statically mapped to a particular backup proxy node and the particular backup proxy node facilitates the backup of the virtual machine(s) or data set(s) mapped to the particular backup proxy node. Each of the virtual machines or data sets to be backed up by the backup proxy node must serially share the backup proxy node. Thus, the window of time that a backup can be performed for each of the virtual machines or data sets mapped to the particular backup proxy node is determined by the work load assigned (mapped) to the particular backup proxy node. The work load is the sum of the backup times for each of the virtual machines and data sets that are backed up by the particular backup proxy node. For example, for a backup proxy node that backups three virtual machines in 6 hours for each virtual machine and also backups data sets for each of a Microsoft® Exchange application, a Sharepoint® application and a SQL Server application in 8 hours each, has a minimum backup window of 3×6 hours plus 3×8 hours is 42 hours. If a backup service level agreement requires that these virtual machines and data sets must be backed up every 36 hours, then the backup proxy node cannot meet the requirements of the service level agreement. To meet the requirements of the service level agreement, a new proxy node must be manually created, and one or more of the virtual machines and/or application data sets must be mapped to the newly created backup proxy node.
In a dynamic virtual environment, where virtual machines are constantly added, moved, and deleted, and wherein application data sets continually grow and shrink, it is very difficult to manually configure, deploy, and map new backup proxy nodes to ensure that backup service level agreement requirements are met. Further, existing backup proxy nodes must be monitored to ensure that the proxy nodes are kept current with respect to the operating system(s) and/or applications and data sets that are to be backed up. In addition, if a host decommissions one or more virtual machines or application data sets, there may be more proxy nodes allocated than are actually needed to optimally back up the virtual machines and data sets, thereby wasting computational resources of the backup proxy server or host computer hosting the virtual proxy nodes.